5 Fundamentals of How To Make A Golf Swing with Joe Park

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is Dick Fits for us from Lincoln, California, and
I play at sun City Lincoln Hills golf Course.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Golf Smarter number one thousand and seven.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I can't thank you enough for mentioning this because the
posture is probably the most overlook fundamental. I'm a big
fan of the swing plane to make your golf swing
much easier, and how far you stand away from the
golf ball is going to have a huge effect again
on the swing plane, and so that's why we're getting
into a specific posture for the golf swing. We're not

(00:35):
getting into a posture to get comfortable. We're not getting
into a posture to have someone tackle us. So there's
none of this sitting in a bar stool. We're basically
taking a golf swing that close around our body and
the balls on the ground. So what we need to
do is to tilt forward from our hips and make
the whole swing circle angle down at a forty five

(00:56):
so now we can go ahead and hit that. So
the best way to work on your posture is making
sure that you don't sit like you're in a bar stool.
What you want to do is you want to bend
from the hips and you want to bend forward until
the club touches the ground. And so now what I've
done is I've taken my shoulder plane. I've taken my
hip plane, and I've got a much better chance of

(01:19):
getting the swing on plane.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Presenting the five fundamentals on how to make a golf
swing with instructor Joe Park. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories,
tips and insights from great golf minds to help you
lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host,
Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smurter Podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Joe. Well, thanks Fred for having me on your show today.
I've been a longtime listener of all of your guests
and have learned quite a bit from everybody. So it's
a great place to get a lot of golf information
for sure.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, thank you. That's really kind of you. But when
you say a long time listener, what does that mean?
How long have you been listening?

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, I think you're probably well over nine hundred episodes.
Oh yeah, I guess, yeah, So that's that's a long
time I've been listening. Oh at least eight nine years.
It's a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Did you find it? How did you find golf smart.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Well, I'm a golf professional, and so one of the
things that I like to do is to research what's
going on in the golf world. And of course the
podcast became very popular, and as they became more popular,
we got an opportunity to listen to a lot of
great minds through the interviews, like your show.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Thank You, Thank You. Which golf instructors or instructor has
resonated with you that's been on the show that's kind
of jumped out and it is like this guy's good.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, you know, there's no one. If there was one
guy that kind of stands out and be Tony, I
think Tony is yah. One of the reasons why is
he and I kind of share the same beliefs about
I don't really call it a single pivot or any
of that. I like to keep golfers a little bit

(03:18):
more on their left side because it's so difficult to
try to get to the right side and then to
go back to the left side. And we're trying to
do this in all less than a quarter of a second.
You know, if a golf swing is one second, the
backswing is three quarters of that, and so the downswing
is a quarter of a second. So even the best athletes,

(03:40):
doesn't matter what sport you play, you're going to have
a difficult time getting from the right side back to
the left side. And so weightshift has become a big
you know, depends on what kind of camp you're in.
I you know, science wise, yes, you need that weight shift.
If you're going to do long drive contests and you're

(04:01):
going to be hitting four hundred and fifty yards and
you want to win, you're going to be using some
of that mass along with velocity in order to get
as max distance as you can for one ball. Though
you know, in golf you need more than one ball
in play, and the distance you certainly don't need as
much now on tour and professionals and those guys that

(04:23):
are playing for living, without a doubt, there's a certain
distance that they need to hit. And I think amateur
golfers as a whole, up to like ten ten handicap golfers,
they don't realize that they don't need to hit it
as far in order to have a very good game.
And you know, with things likes Arcos, who has that

(04:45):
all that information, they got over a billion bits of
golfers doing things so they know what golfers need to
improve on and improve in order to lower their handicap.
And one of the things in there is that for
a ten handicap, did you know that you only need
to hit the ball what two hundred yards in the
fairway and two twenty five in the rough to lose

(05:09):
zero strokes to all ten handicap golfers. So when you
think about that and I look at the size of
the golfers that are on the golf course, I'm like,
I think he could hit it two hundred and twenty
five yards with a driver in their hand, probably with
a three wood in their hand. The problem is when
you stand there and you put all these extra curricular

(05:30):
movements mostly to try to get more distance, and then
you're sacrificing solid contact and other things that is very
beneficial to get the maximum distance and to keep it
in play. So when Tony was a big promonent of
the single pivot, he was really staying more on your

(05:51):
left side as much as you could so that in
the back in the downswing, the weight is kind of
transferred over there and now you don't have to shift
your weight. And when you think about the golf swing
and think about it in a circular motion, and you
have at the very bottom of the circle, we have
a low point and that's the bottom of the swing art,

(06:12):
and so we need to move that bottom of that
swing art in front of the golf ball. And so
when we start moving to the right and left, we're
constantly moving that swing art and don't even realize what
we're doing. We're moving our swing the whole time. So
it's much easier to just stay stationary feeling wise where
you've got. You know, when you said sixty forty to

(06:33):
stay on that side, and then eventually at the top
of the golf swing you even felt a little bit
more on that side. Now some people would say, oh
my gosh, that's crazy, because you know, it doesn't make
a lot of sense, but scientifically it does make sense
when you think of the circle right and you're making
the golf swing, and let's go back to like the

(06:56):
first position in the backswing where the shaft is kind
of parallel to the ground, and that part is going
to be the farthest, outermost part of the circle. And
then from there the circle starts to come back towards
the target. So when we stand at the tarp. Yeah,

(07:16):
so we stand there after that position, the club is
already starting to go towards the target. And so as
the club is going towards the target, the best golfers
we know now with technology there are already have started
their downsliding before the backswing finishes. And now you can
I can explain it to you just from the circle
that after P two or you know, shaft parallel, it's

(07:39):
starting to go back up and it's going in and
it's going towards the target. So it's staying on plane,
but it's also moving and so some of that is
going to move you and shift you. And there's where
you get the seventy where seventy more, you know, instead
of sixty forty, Now you go seventy and you feel
more of that on that left side. And now all
you have to do is focus on hitting down and

(08:01):
compressing that ball because you've already you know, in a sense,
shifted your weight. Now you can delay that longer for
of course, if you're trying to hit the ball farther,
but as I mentioned, it's unnecessary for a lot of golfers.
You can play a lot of very good golf just
staying on your left side or feeling like. And that's

(08:23):
the other thing, yeah, because you know when we're moving
it off to the right, and you know, it's just
for that split second and then everything comes back to
the other side. And the reason why is our brain
is getting ready for a lot of our intentions that
we're trying to do. So for example, when you're like
getting ready to really hit a long ball and you

(08:43):
wind up and you get ready, your muscles are and
your brain's getting ready to put the brakes on and
stop your golf swing and get ready for that. And
also usually shortens up the swing when people are trying
to hit it farther unless they're really loose and they
don't realize that. So our brains are reacting to what
we want to do. All we want to do is
really understand, you know, obviously the ball flight laws and

(09:06):
some of the swing mechanics so that we can repeat
the shot over and over again and staying on our
left side feeling like, because you will shift a little bit.
And if we talk about shifting, you know, we know
now with gears and three you know, a lot of
high tech equipment, the amount of shift off to the
right is about the size of a golf ball. So

(09:30):
but so even if we did right, let's say that
we did, that's how much Rory is moving off the ball. Okay, So,
and he's hitting it a long ways and he's winding
up and the rest of us don't need that. We
can play a lot of very good golf by first
starting to hit the ball more solid, and by hitting

(09:51):
the ball more solid and hitting down on the golf ball,
you know, not hanging back and scooping up on it
and getting under it and adding too much law. So
there's just way more benefits to staying on your left
side than there is to getting onto your right side.
And if you think about, you know about weight shift
and legs, you know, I'm not going to say that

(10:12):
they're not a part of it. It's just they get
too much of the of the you know, publicity. When
we know that you can hit balls off your knees
quite a way. You know, we've seen tiger woods to
long drive people hit the ball a long waist. About
seventy five percent of your clubhead speed is going to

(10:33):
come from your hands, wrists and forearms. And so if
you get too much of that body involved, and you know,
and think that the arms come along for the ride,
you got another thing coming. If you want to increase
your clubhead speed, you know, the simplest way when somebody
says I want to get faster clubhead speed, you know
you got to think about you. You're holding the club

(10:55):
with your hands, and so in order to get that
to go faster, you got to move your hand faster,
and to move the hands faster, your arms and then
your upper body. So you really got to get those
upper body parts moving and then the lower body helps
adjust the rest of that and you know, transports the

(11:16):
package into the delivery, so it allows your arms and
hands to do some work too. Everybody plays a role,
so we just have to understand who plays what role,
and the body plays a role, but we've got to
get the arms and hands to play a little more,
and I think that helps when we stay more on
our left side.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
As an instructor, you probably hear the same thing that
probably every instructor hears, at least the ones that I've
spoken to, that the first thing that people ask for
is consistency. Second thing is more distance or is it
the other way around? Do they want more distance and
then they want more distancy.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, So when you.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Talk about faster club head speed, that equates to greater distance.
But people get lost in the fact that the a
new piece of gear, a new ball, is what is
going to equate to greater distance maybe three yards, you know,

(12:27):
if you're going to be literal about it, and what
they should be asking for is less dispersion, right and
consistently getting the ball in the fairway. And if you
want a lower score is just get the ball in
the fairway. But to get greater distance, you really do

(12:47):
need to work on your body to get that faster
club head speed, don't you. You need to increase your
muscle mass somewhat, your body mobility or flexibility.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
I you know, there's no question that, like I said earlier,
the body plays a very big role, but the arms
and hands play a very big role as well. And
if the body gets out in front, that's going to
affect our swing plane and lock the arms and hands
from doing their job. And they've got to be moving.
So the best way that I could explain it to you,

(13:19):
if we think about just thinking circles. You know, the
golf swing is a circle. Let's think of the club
head as being a big circle. And then let's think
of your hips as a circle. Now that's smaller, and
then your shoulders, you know, that's the next size. And

(13:40):
so when we come back down on our downswing, all
the circles, which circle has the most to travel and
that would be the club head and so they need
to get going. But you'll never see this on video.
So on video, what you're going to see is sequencing.
So you're going to see the lower body starting as

(14:01):
I mentioned before, if we look at it from behind
the golfer, the golf swing's already going towards the target,
towards the top. So a lot of times when we
see a video face on, we'll see the golfer, you know,
start the down swing from the lower body and then
working their way all the way up. What we're not
seeing in that from a science or engineering standpoint is

(14:25):
the acceleration rates. So how much faster does the clubhead
have to move in order to catch up with you know,
the hips and the body as they turn. You know,
the body the hips are turning what forty five, you know,
forty five degrees, the shoulders ninety a little bit more
if you can, and then you know, the club head

(14:45):
is going to how much farther. So it's an unfair
race when we start the downswing that we start with
the lower body. We start with the you know, turning
and spinning that's going to get our hands to come
out to end. For the high handicap golfers and for
the better golfers, what they do is get stuck. And

(15:05):
so what happens is they get trapped as they start
too early with the lower body. So what you want
to do is get those arms and hands to move
as quickly as possible and the rest of the body
will catch you up. It's like running. When you want
to run faster, you move your arms faster, and then
also your legs are moving faster too, and you don't
even realize it. So by moving your arms and hands faster,

(15:28):
it picks up the speed of the rest of your
body to turn. So we got to look at it,
you know, take a step back, look at it from
an engineering and science of how it all happens, and
then come back and then you can tell me what
you like and what you don't like. But you know,
we have to stay with the golf swing with physics
and geometry, you know, physics is what's powering the swing,

(15:52):
and geometry is the shape of the swing, and so
how we stand to the ball and how we make
our swing plane is going to have a huge effect
on the clubhead speed. Way more over, I got to
spin my hips, or I got to turn my body,
or that I got to be in the gym. Okay.
You know, even Tony was mentioning how old he was

(16:12):
and he was hitting the ball long ways, and he
didn't feel like he needed to work on doing much.
He could always do it in a presentation, and he's
absolutely right. So a lot of this, I understand, is
my talk. But my children who I'm training, they are
professional golfers today. So if you go on if you
go on my Instagram, and you'll see the pictures and

(16:35):
the videos of them demonstrating some of my fundamentals that
you know that I've taught them over the years. You know,
they're going to be going to Q school this fall,
and so both of them, yes, and so we're grad
thank you, but you know, we still have to get
through that.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
So that's all the fact that they're even scheduled to
go is pretty impressive.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
So a lot of the stuff that I'm talking to
you about are the stuff that I instilled to my
boys as well as other professionals that I've worked with
over the years. I also worked with one gentleman, I
worked with one other junior kid who I ended up
with a scholarship in Florida. So I've worked at the
highest level of swings at a very fast speed. So

(17:19):
the things that I'm telling you, it's not just for
some senior golfer or some high handicap golfer. This is
for at the highest level. You know. This is for
when I'm with with my sons at a golf tournament.
You know, we got you know, five ten thousand dollars
invested in the tournament. We can't miss this cut. And

(17:40):
so there's no you can't be doing a lot of
swing thoughts and a lot of ideas. You're going to
pack your bags and go. And we've been at this
for over twenty years. Trust me when I tell you
a lot of the stuff that we're talking about is
real world scenarios of what you really can do on
the golf course, even at the highest level. And so

(18:00):
my kids are the perfect example. It's like a lot
of teachers can talk concepts and ideas and maybe have
somebody that they work with and that they've taught. But here,
I've worked with my boys from you know, they started
golfing at four and all the way up to now.
So I've seen the swinging progress. I've watched it at

(18:23):
the highest level, and so I know what's going to
be the simplest way. And what I just have explained
is what I just basically taught to boys. And if
they can do it, being what they only weigh like
one hundred and thirty hundred and forty pounds and they
can hit the ball three hundred yards. So if they
can do that, I know anybody listening can do what

(18:49):
the fundamentals that we're about to talk about.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, were you a golf instructor before you became a father.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yes, So I've been a golf teaching profra thirty years.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
I started my career thirty years ago, you know, playing
the Mini Tours down in Florida, and I had an
opportunity to work with, you know, great coaches like Mike Bender.
I don't know if you're familiar with who he is.
He's one of the top five coaches. You know, he's
been for a long time and a big student, yeah,

(19:23):
a big student of the you know, the Maclgrady and
the Morod system, the golfing machine stack until so all
of that, Yeah, all of that was a very big
part of all of our teaching. So it doesn't matter
if you're a teacher today, all of that had an
effect on your teaching. You know, one nugget here or there.

(19:43):
We're all sharing that example in order to find the
big picture, which is to make the golf swing simpler
and not have more ideas and more confusing concepts. So
what I did is I just narrowed down basically the
five on them that I have worked on with my sons.

(20:05):
And these are the same fundamentals that I do in
every one of my golf lessons. So it doesn't matter
who comes in. These five fundamentals that we're talking about
is grip, posture, backswing, down swing, and impact. And it
doesn't matter what concept or belief you have, You're going
to have to have all of these five fundamentals in

(20:27):
every golf swing. And so I've just what I've done
is I've created a little ebook to show you how
to just hold the club, how to take the back
swing just a simpler way, and hopefully I can explain
that to you today in a simple way so that
your listeners can have something to work on.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
When you talked about that downswing a few minutes ago,
and you were talking about getting a faster downswing, right,
the issue that I seem to have and I see
it all the time and you probably do as well,
is that people think that if they want to get
faster on the downswing, they got to swing harder. Now

(21:13):
is there a difference there between faster and harder, because
with harder, again my observation, with swinging it harder, you're
increasing the tension in your arms and your shoulders, in
your body, and the I guess the ultimate goal is
to be tension free throughout your swing.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, you know, the tension stuff is kind of it's
there's no question it's important, but the amount of tension
is more reactionary. So like when somebody is going to
go down intentionally to go faster, the the you know,
the muscles are going to adapt to what you're trying
to do. So the key is is your intention to

(21:54):
swing it faster with your arms or is it to
keep your arms up and spin your hips faster, so
that you know, so it's not really how hard am
I holding it? It's dow I the lee that swinging
my arms faster will get me more clubhead speed and
the amount of tension will naturally, you know, happen.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
So your book is called Your Ebook is by Joe
Park and joeparkgolf dot Com is Joe Park's five Fundamentals
on how to make a golf swing. And it's it's
pretty basic. It's it's not only great for beginners, it's

(22:37):
also a great reminder for all of us coming out
of you know, a wet, wintry, cold winter when we're
not playing as much, our bodies are kind of falling
out of golf shape. This is great reminders for everyone
to have. And it's not long. It's it's actually I
did it in three nights. I mean it's pretty that's

(22:58):
pretty fast for me. And you go chapter one the
grip to stance and postures, so you know what you
talked about, your five fundamentals grip, posture, backswing, down, swinging
the follow through. How does your book, your Ebook differ
from Ben Hogan's Five Fundamentals.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, so, first of all, Ben Hogan's book is a
wonderful book. I'm a big fan, as everybody is. I
think there what can happen with that book is it
can get misinterpreted, just like a lot of things in life.
And so we have to remember Ben said right away
that this is the way that he played golf and

(23:42):
it and he did try to help, you know, he
was an instructor. He did help on his off times.
It said that he did give golf instructions. So he
suffered with having all of these high handicaps coming to him,
so he knows what they're suffering as well. Now, the
book itself in general is a great book with all

(24:03):
the fundamentals. The difference is that he had a problem
hooking the ball. And so if you go to ball
flight laws, we understand that you know, the face and
the club path have a huge influence as well as
the clubhead speed obviously, but have a huge influence on
the direction of your ball flights. And Hogan was a

(24:26):
hooker of the golf ball, and so what that meant
is that he hooked it to the left alive, and
so he needed a way to make sure that, according
to ball flight laws, that the face wasn't close to
his swing or to his swing path. And so he
says it in I think in page thirty two, I
weakened my grip to the left because I have a

(24:50):
hooking problem. And unless you have that problem, you know,
that's he forgot to say, unless you have that problem,
don't do this. But he said I had a problem hooking,
so I turned it to the left. I made two changes,
and he says that in there. So it's not for
somebody to find that and see that red alarm. But

(25:10):
that's what he did in order to fix his hook.
Aside from that, uh, and then his downswing, he worked
on really starting his lower body to start the downswing.
And so if you think about somebody, somebody that hooks
the ball for a better golfer, I talked about the downswing.
When they start with the lower body, they can get stuck. Okay,

(25:34):
so they can get underneath. Now he didn't get stuck,
but what that does for him is it opened the
face up a little bit more and it delayed it.
So between that move and that it kind of helped
him hit a straighter ball.

Speaker 1 (25:50):
Can you define stuck.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
Stuck meaning so stuck.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
He didn't stop the swing right?

Speaker 2 (25:57):
No? No, no, So what we're talking about is that
when we're talking the downswing, you know, we set up
at a dress and we're hopefully in a good position
at a dress and at the top of the golf sling,
we're in a good position up there where the left
arm is just covering the right shoulder. When the downslign begins,
a lot of high handicapped golfers, what will happen is

(26:18):
they'll come out to end like that and come across
the ball, okay. And what happens from that is because
maybe they start with the lower body starting to spin
the hips or their upper body and keeping the arms up,
and that forces it to come come down out to end,
and they don't realize that they're actually making that happen.

(26:39):
For a better golfer that doesn't do that, they have,
they're not gonna do that. What they're gonna do is
they're gonna spin, and their hits are gonna clear, and
the right elbow is gonna get stuck right here between
the right elbow, and so you can see how much
flatter the swing plane gets. Okay, and so from this
position you either have you're gonna end up having to

(27:00):
roll it and hit a big hook shot or hold
the shot and what they call a block out to
the right. Okay, So it's not advisable for the high
handicap or the better golfer. Okay, thet either way. From here,
you want to try to get your arms and hands
to come right back down, back down the plane that

(27:22):
you went back up on when you set up at
a dress here and hopefully when you set up at
a dress that the shaft is sitting in the in
the right angle, which should be about forty five degrees
to the ground. So if your posture is up like this,
or if you stand too far away from the ball,
that's going to affect your swing plane. That's going to

(27:42):
affect then the way that you come back down. So
the simplest way to work on your down swing is,
first of all, get a better grip. Okay. So in
what I do is I just have people hang their
left arm just by their left side. And when young
the left arm just by the left side, you'll see
that the thumb wants to curl in more to the right.

(28:06):
The thumb does not want to go down the middle.
If you relax it, and if you then take your
grip from that position, it'll allow your wrist to hinge
and it'll allow your face to be in the proper
position up at the top. And so the most common
grip that comes in in my lessons is the thumb
right down the middle, which you know Hogan did, because

(28:26):
that allows a face to be open. But it's not
very good for the high handicap. They're coming out to
the end with an open club face. And a lot
of times that can be fixed just by getting the
grip in what I call a closed face grip instead
of an open face grip. Just to have it let
your left arm hang and it'll go just to the
right side, and then you'll see a couple of knuckles

(28:49):
on your left side and the upside down b will
point to your right shoulder. Now some people will call
this a strong grip. I call this a natural grip
because this is how your joints want to line if
you put it down the if you just put it
in the middle, it'll want to go right like that
and that'll open the face. And so now you've got
all this extra work. So the simplest thing is to

(29:11):
just start with a grip that'll get the club pace
to come back more square and all of us can
do this by just hanging the left arm by your
left side. Anybody I've done this, you know for a
long time as a teacher. There's nobody that's come to
me down the middle. If anybody's down the middle because

(29:31):
they're hooking the ball, they're a plus handicap and their
problem isn't coming over the top and slicing. Okay, that's
a different whole issue, which which we can address too.
But I'm talking the ninety percent of golfers who come
over the top hit fat and thin shots. If you
could get a better grip, and Tony's idea of staying

(29:53):
more as well as mine, I say stay more on
your left side. Those two simple things is going to
get the face more where your weight transferred. And it's
already simplified the golf swing. So getting the grip in
the right position with the left hand just letting it hang,
and then your right hand, you want to make sure
that it gets just behind the shaft to slightly under it,

(30:15):
and you want it more in the fingers. Okay. So
often I see the grip where it's in the palm
of the hand, and the reason they have in the
palm is it feels more comfortable, it feels like you
got really like, you know, you could really club somebody
with that. But I always say, listen, if you held
a baseball in the palm of your hand, how far

(30:36):
could you throw that versus if you had it in
the fingers. So if you want to get a lot
of clubheadspeed, just start with the right hand, making sure
that it's more in the fingers, a little bit more
behind the shaft. It will feel like you can't hold
the club, and that's because those little muscles need to
be trained as well as they need to be strengthened.

(30:56):
But the minute that you hit the ball, you don't
believe how much more clubhead speed that you're going to
get because you can't throw it as fast in the
palm as in the fingers. So then the right hand,
you want to make sure that it's in the fingers
and don't put that thumb down the middle again, that
thumb goes to the left side, and that's going to

(31:17):
help you with impact and triggerers and all kinds of
other good things. But that also helps you up at
the top of the golf swing, support the club in
the right position. That thumb being down the middle I
find has just hurt so many golf swing and forces
the golf swing to come over the top as well.
So just a simple lesson of the left hand in
the right hand will allow the club to do the

(31:40):
things that it needs to do and the hands to
do what it needs to do. And then of course,
after we have a good grip, we have to get
into the right posture.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Well, this is not something I usually do with this podcast,
but I need to this last section that we've just
done with Joe. He's been standing up with a club
in his hand, describing all this in full detail. I'm
gonna go ahead and take this segment and put this
on YouTube so YouTube can see it as well, and

(32:12):
we'll be back right after this. Now, getting back to
the grip, Joe for just a second, you had this
great drill in here that I've never heard of before
called hot dog in a bun. And you also provided
a secret tip with the right hand. If you didn't

(32:34):
cover those already, please share that with us.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, so when your thumb is on the right side
and you've got your grip, just think of that as
like the hot dog, and when you put your right
hand it just covered your right palm. After you have
it in the fingers, you just cover that up with
the palm of the right hand, and so then that
would be the bun. And so this is what I
get for the junior kids when we do our programs,

(33:01):
we say hot dog and a bun, and they never
forget to cover that thumb up with that right hand,
which is going to be very big in the golf
swing as we make our transition and so forth.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
What's the downside? People I've seen just have a regular
like baseball bat grip where their hands are you know,
there's no overlapping at all. What are they uh, what's
the detriment to doing it that way? What are they
losing out on?

Speaker 2 (33:26):
I'm a big I'm a big fan of the baseball grip.
It's just you have to you have to hold it properly.
In baseball. The baseball grip basically is all ten fingers
on the on the club. It's just not interlocking or overlapping.
But you can have all ten fingers on the club.
You just got to make sure that it's in the
fingers and you can see I can still cover up

(33:47):
my left thumb. And so as far as the baseball
grip is concerned. I do this. I do this with
a lot of my juniors and a lot of ladies.
And the reason why is in the golf swing, when
we take the back swing, we want to get this
club to stay on plane. And in order to stay
on plane, it's a very heavy club. And so the

(34:08):
more that you can get your right hand on the club,
the better control you have to take this club up
and in get it on a better swing plane. And
so I don't mind that. As matter of fact, I
did you know that I mentioned earlier about one of
my students. He's off playing college with a ten finger grip.

(34:30):
So it does work. It just it's not very popular
with a lot of people, but I love it for
golfers to start high handicap golfers. It gets you better
control of the right arm. And that is so important
in the golf swing is the right arm, and the
right arm controls the whole swing plane as you take
it back and fold. The swing plane needs to be

(34:52):
going back, it needs to be going up, and it
needs to be going in, and your right arm is
the magic of the right arm is taking it back
up and in just by folding your right arm, and
when you're folding your right arm, you can get on
the perfect swingplane. And then on the downswing you just
go ahead and unfold your arm, and that's what provides

(35:13):
that downswing. Now, what happens is if you start an
unwined too quickly, you can unfold. And if you're not unfolding,
that's like I can't unwine my throat. And that's why
you want to go ahead and just think about folding
it up there and unfolding and getting those arms and
hands to come back down and out towards the ball,

(35:34):
and that's how you'll get your increased club headspe But
the ten finger grip works and it's great for a
lot of beginners. So I'm a big fan of it.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Awesome, awesome. So in chapter two, I'm not going to
go through all five chapters, no problem. No, we want
everyone to go ahead and get it for themselves, the
ebook for themselves. But posture and stand and posture I
find there. You know, I've seen a lot of people

(36:04):
who may have the correct posture, and a lot of
people don't. They kind of hunch over more, but they're
also really far from the ball. They're really stretching their
hands out and they're probably losing a lot when doing that.
Can you explain what happens if you are too far
from the ball or even too close, what's the impact.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
On those I can't thank you enough for mentioning this,
because the posture is probably the most after the grip,
probably the most overlooked fundamental. It is going to make
or break your golf sling, and how far you stand
away from the golf ball or how close you are
is going to have a huge effect. Again on the
swing plane. I'm a big fan of the swing plane

(36:47):
to make your golf sling much easier. And so that's
why we're getting into a specific posture for the golf sling.
We're not getting into a posture to get comfortable. We're
not getting into a posture to have some and tackle us.
So there's none of this sitting in a bar stool.
We're basically taking a golf swing that close around our

(37:07):
body and the balls on the ground. So what we
need to do is to tilt forward from our hips
and make the whole swing circle angle down at a
forty five so now we can go ahead and hit that.
So the best way to work on your posture is
making sure that you don't sit like you're in a
bar stool. What you want to do is you want

(37:28):
to bend from the hips, and you want to bend
forward until the club touches the ground. And so now
what I've done is I've taken my shoulder plane, I've
taken my hip plane, and I've put I've got a
much better chance of getting the swing on plane. A
lot of golfers are working on early extension and trying
to fix that. Next from the hips, not tilting into

(37:52):
the correct posture. When the hips don't tilt and they
stay level, they're just going to slide around, and there's
where you're going to end up hitting behind the golf ball.
So the best way to get in the perfect posture
is again, I'm getting your grip, hanging it out there.
Then get the shaft to be just parallel to the
ground and standing straight up, and then just bow down,

(38:14):
bending from the hips until the club touches the ground.
And you'll see how much more over the golf ball
you're going to feel instead of sitting. And if you
want to know how to do that, just find a wall,
get to a wall, and then just go ahead and
bend forward. I'm trying to get away from the wall.
So often what happens to golfers is they just sit

(38:36):
down and they put their rear too far back, and
what ends up pushing all of the mass and the
swing into a wrong position, which is going to force
you to stand up, early, extension, all kinds of other things.
So it's not going to feel great getting into a
golf posture. It shouldn't feel natural. There's nothing natural about that.

(38:57):
We're going to work on that until you get that,
and just going forward, you'll feel how much more bent
Now we can hit down and compress the ball instead
of just sitting down. But we just sit Now our
backswing gets too flat heard and now we've got to
come over the top, and some people are going to
skip that and they're just going to pick the club

(39:18):
up and then come back down. All of that came
from the inability to pivot, and that pivot comes from posture.
And so what we want to do is bend forward
and then walk into the golf ball. And how far
our arms should be is they should be just hanging
under the shoulder someone. Now they're not going to be

(39:40):
you know, they're going to be a little bit here
or there, just depending on if you've got a driver
or if you're standing closer to the ball with a wedge.
But for the most part, they're going to be hanging
underneath your shoulders. If you have to reach out for
the golf ball, more than likely you're going to yank
the club underneath the plane and come back over the
top as well. So work on your posture and that's

(40:02):
the first step to getting a good swing plane to
get up on top.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
All right. To wrap this up, I'm curious, can you
explain the JPX drill? It's in your.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Ebook, So that one I'm not going to explain because
that's the big ticket. Okay, that's that is the big ticket.
So now, Fred, what I've done is I asked myself
for the next one hundred golf lessons, what are you
going to do with the golfers that come in the door.
They're going to have a grip, a posture, a backswing,

(40:35):
a down swing, and an impact and so I want
to get those things buttoned up now. To put it
all together, I have a special drill in there that
I put and allows the golfers to put all of
the things that I just talked about together, and within
three swings, I promise you they fix their over the

(40:56):
top and they learn how to swing from into out.
It's too simple, it's too easy. The book is like
you'll probably if you read it, you'll probably put it down.
But if you take the time and you try it,
these are the same principles that my kids are hitting with.
So they're not ideas. And unless you can hit better

(41:18):
than them, we want to try it. And they are
only one thirty to one and wait, you know, under
six feet and hit the ball three hundred yards. So
the point and they're very well, the young and supple,
of course, but I'm not that's not the real reason.
The real reason is physics and science. You know they're
utilizing taking advantage of all of that. But the extra

(41:42):
in there will be a great way to fix you.
So if you get the book, you're going to I
guarantee to fix your slice.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
A nice way to avoid the question. Well, you know,
I think people may want to check you out. Here again,
it's Joe Park Golf, and he Joe specializes in taking
fifteen to twenty handicaps and turning him into scratch golfers.
So that alone is enough to make your interest level

(42:14):
rise just to touch and he's a fan of Tony Manzoni.
How bad can that be?

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah, before you go? So, I got an email from
a listener this morning. He says, can you ask people
where what their three favorite courses are? And then I'll
ask the second part of that question, where's your three
favorite courses?

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Oh? You know, Scottsdale is loaded with so many golfs,
so that is a very it's a trick question. You know,
some of the courses that I love, you can't really
normally go and play right because they're private, but public courses,
let's talk about that. If you come down here, you
got to play True North. That's probably I'm always on

(42:53):
the bucket list. Yep. And then of course farther down
from their wikopa is another one one. Have you ever
tried that?

Speaker 1 (43:01):
I played it in a pro am before Open. I've
played we a couple of times. Love that course, yeah
every time?

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Yeah, yeah, So, I mean we're just so blessed with
so many courses. My favorite private courses obviously are silver
Leaf Is Stancia and Marabell, which are the neighboring courses,
and they're very very you know they maintain them to
such a level. But yeah, every course in Scottsdale is
like being at a private course. They make sure to

(43:34):
maintain it as if you were a member for the day.
So it doesn't matter what course you play in Scottsdale,
you're going to be treated right.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
That's true. That's true. Okay, And the second part of
the question is, and I'm gonna make a caveat on this,
you're you're not allowed to answer with your children involved
in this question. Two of your career highlights.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Oh, my goodness. My career high lights, Well, I would say,
you know, my career highlights was we moved here from Minnesota,
as I mentioned earlier, and we had a golf facility there.
So what I got on opportunity to do was to
build an eighteen hole championship pitch and putt golf course. Wow.

(44:20):
And so it was built with bent greens, bunkers, water hazards,
all the holes were under a ninety yards. All you
needed was a wedge and putter. So I designed that
along with my father in law, and obviously it was
a family project. But that and then we had the
driving range and the driving range we were open year round.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
In Minnesota.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
In Minnesota. So now here's how I did it. I
took a plow, raised the front end, and I plowed
the driving range. And it took me forty hours to
plow our range. It was, you know, like three hundred
and fifty yards long by three hundred yards wide. That's
like eleven some NFL football fields. So I plowed that

(45:06):
took me forty hours, so that I could pick the
balls and we were open in the Winner. So my
biggest accomplishment is a year round. And then I put
in a building with infrared heat so that you could
just be in a light sweatshirt and see the full
length of your shot dead winner awesome. And then of
course we built I built the golf course, and so

(45:27):
that to me is probably my biggest highlight. And of
course my boys watching them.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
They weren't allowed to be in the answer, that was too.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
So my biggest accomplishment is probably building that facility. We
had over three hundred juniors a year in our junior program,
so we did a really good job of growing the game,
and our golf facility allowed us to really meet great people.
Great people again.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Joe Park's five fundamentals how to make a golf swing
by Joe Park. Thanks so much for your time today
and the lessons UH and the video. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Thank you so much, Friends, m HM

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5 Fundamentals of How To Make A Golf Swing with Joe Park

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